Glossy effect for Citation II livery?

[chris_blues]

Ok, I've made the windows and doors smoother by applying transarency-gradients to the pixel-corners in the greymap.
I changed the cubemap, as described above.
I changed fresneliness to 0.05, since the original is quite shiny/reflective.
I changed the background color of the livery/hull to a very dark green-tone. (It's very hard to get a somewhat decent color. Every photo I have on the livery has different shades of colors...)

Anyway, here are the files I've changed/added (zipped ca.2MB)

And this is how it looks now:


Any further ideas/critics/hints/opinions are appretiated!!!

[HHS]

Now the chrome shows a black and white environment- not very realistic

If you look closer at the real image you can see clearly the environment (landscape) in its natural colors.
Instead I would use as cubemap:

Code: Select all

<positive-x>Aircraft/Generic/Effects/CubeMaps/real.blue-sky/fair-sky_px.png</positive-x>
<negative-x>Aircraft/Generic/Effects/CubeMaps/real.blue-sky/fair-sky_nx.png</negative-x>
<positive-y>Aircraft/Generic/Effects/CubeMaps/real.blue-sky/fair-sky_py.png</positive-y>
<negative-y>Aircraft/Generic/Effects/CubeMaps/real.blue-sky/fair-sky_ny.png</negative-y>
<positive-z>Aircraft/Generic/Effects/CubeMaps/real.blue-sky/fair-sky_pz.png</positive-z>
<negative-z>Aircraft/Generic/Effects/CubeMaps/real.blue-sky/fair-sky_nz.png</negative-z>


And change the specular color with the followingline in line 3 of Citation-II.ac to this:

Code: Select all

MATERIAL "glosswhite" rgb 1 1 1 amb 1 1 1 emis 0.0 0.0 0.0 spec 0.5 0.5 0.5 shi 64 trans 0

and maybe set refl_correction to 0.25

To get it nearly perfect the model needs a material change for the cromish parts on the engines, but this seems quite complicated to me.

The main reason that it won't look 100% exact is that the reference image you use seems to be made at the later afternoon/evening. But the cubemap we use were made at early afternoon in the summer. The different lighting influences the effect.

Nethertheless- great work from you and it would be more than a nice contribution! Want to see your work in the next release!
.

[chris_blues]

I did all you said, and like it for the most part. Except the cubemap! This seems to colorful to me! I've never seen an environment in FlightGear that looks so yellowish... What would you do with it? Keep it? Change the color?

Want to see your work in the next release!

Yea, me too! After that much work, I'd love to see it "gitted"! This would be the first bigger contribution I would have done... Hopefully the first of many!

[HHS]

I have a problem myself with color vision (problems with greenish and reddish colors). Why I have no problem in job and while driving, on editing colors of images I have more problems. So I have to say don't see any yellowish colors.
The difference in saturation I can explain with the fact that FGFS has a unnatural low visibility. Increase it as far as you can and you will see a similar saturation in FGFS.

[i4dnf]

The cromish parts can be made (are already made more reflective ) by altering their shininess with a material animation. If you check the citation-II.xml you should find a second shininess line, a bit lower than the first one which sets the shininess to 192. (I'm not sure but i seem to remember a clamp on that value somewhere, maybe 128, maybe 192). Then making sure their coresponding parts of the greymap is totaly opaque.
I see you've missed that part in the greymap you're using in the last screenshot.
BTW, I too can't wait to get this livery .

[HHS]

The cromish parts can be made (are already made more reflective ) by altering their shininess with a material animation. If you check the citation-II.xml you should find a second shininess line, a bit lower than the first one which sets the shininess to 192. .

Changing doesn't work. But it would be better to have the different materials splitted in the .ac-model. Glass needs an own material, like the chromish parts needs it.

[HHS]

I changed the materials settings of the engine parts in Blender.
You get the updated 3d-model here

[i4dnf]

That's very strange as here it works, and I'm using it in the IAR to change shininess between the liveries too. (The camouflage one is less shiny than the other two.

[chris_blues]

So far so good! I like it! Thanks for the ac-file!
The level of color in the reflection depends on the opacity of the greymap directly. full opaque = full spectrum; less opaque = less color. Right now, I'm on 50% opacity on the chrome-parts.
The first block in citation.xml is 128, the second block 192 shininess.
Here it is:


Any ideas, what to do about these trimmers? Well the flag is some pixels away, but it still seems to affect the horizontale...

[chris_blues]

While looking for mistakes, I found this one, and I just don't get it! The opening of the upper engine has a dark ring right in front of it. And there's a dark "zone" like exhaust residue on it's back/thrust reverser. Look-a-here:

I've checked the greymap and the livery-file for mistakes, but I believe, I have run everything down, what came to mind... Look at the pics:
Lv_4.png :


greymap.png :

[i4dnf]

I believe those are artefacts from the cubemap images. Do they stay in the same position if you change your point of view ?

[chris_blues]

Yes! It's not a reflection, it's actually beneath th reflection. I mean, it's reflecting just fine, but the color underneath is dark. Generally, in the pic above, both engines should look more or less the same... And its only on this certain engine...

[i4dnf]

I don't see it here, and as i have a different cubemap asigned I still believe it's because of the cubemap.
The only thing that caught my eye that could have been related was a missing corner in the greymap, but that's on the underside of the other engine.

You've really done a great job with the livery and the greymap, and remember, any small imperfection counts towards perfection .

[chris_blues]

I took out the corner to avoid cutting into the stabilisator...
I'll try to make the mistake more visible...

Update:
I changed the pic above. From this position, the chrome borders/rings in the front of the engines should be the same, but on the right one is clearly a dark ring.
And at the other end of the engines, the right one has sth on it...

Plus I still haven't found the problem with the red and blue tail trimmers...

[i4dnf]

Instead you could just test with a different cubemap in the effect file, and see if that "burned" mark remains there , I'm willing to bet it won't be there anymore